that traders have been watching so closely. >> a number of the names we have been watching, verizon, for example, had been down it is up 2.5%. that's a real print, by the way. that will do it for us on "squawk on the street. "tech check" starts now. >> good tuesday morning. this hour storm clouds on the horizon for microsoft. why investors are bracing for a slowdown in azure. we will find out soon, of course this dropped call for verizon, shares are making a mid-morning turn-around as the dow goes green. a holding pattern for thin check. the stocks you want in your portfolio. >> good morning. we'll take a look at the markets right now. stocks are off their lows but struggling to build on back-to-back gains you have the s&p 500 and the nasdaq composite slightly above

the red. and the dow industrial is just poking its head into the greens earning season it is in full swing. it was in full swing this morning with 3m, verizon, union pacific. we did see a number of those names being halted mid-morning due to technical issues at the new york stock exchange, jon. >> yeah. we will kick off with microsoft. reporting this morning revenue expected to be in line with guidance. the stock facing pressure outside of the top line numbers. first azure has an uphill battle the company expecting 36% growth for its cloud platform six points lower than the previous quarter microsoft fighting off antitrust certainty over its blizzard deal and they're leaning into artificial intelligence. a multi-billion dollar investment in ai and chatgpt and

layoffs this quarter street is pretty bullish with 17% and five return based on the average price target let's bring in steve who is going to be covering this for us tonight. steve, we're about halfway through microsoft's fiscal year, which means the guide is going to be particularly important, right, into their fiscal q3 and then maybe even analysts will try to extrapolate what that means for the full year. >> that's exactly right, especially because their fiscal year will end at the end of june and the cfo, a lot of these headwinds we're about to dive into will start to fade after that, especially foreign exchange, which we know has been a damper on that azure cloud growth, what they talk about on a constant basis all the time. but it is really hurting not to mention the energy costs it costs to run those data centers. those are making it more costly to keep that growth as high as it has been. 36% sounds like a lot, and it is a lot. but this was growing 48%, 50% at

one point. >> right it's valuation is priced for a certain level. you can kind of take your guess on what that level is. but how exposed is my croicrosot there is the pc windows group, more personal computing. you have the gaming group as well as that perhaps start to filter through into office, if people get laid off, maybe they're not paying for office or at least their employer isn't how much does all of that demand issue in the consumer and enterprise side start to affect? >> i want to go back to a year ago. microsoft was the first one to flag these warning signs the demand is no longer there. they're still saying it. there is no sign that it will flip back around we talk about this all the time. everyone bought ahead during the pandemic it spending went through the roof as people were working from home it spending is expected to grow this year, but much more

moderately that's what's hurting them, too. to your point, on the regular consumer side, not buying as many pcs, and that hurts windows. >> on the other side of this i'm interested in, what are they going to say about cloud this is typically the metric azure growth and the azure forecast as they zero in on it, jon. is the slowdowngoing to be worse than expected? we know microsoft's numbers are higher than aws because it comes from a lower base. do you think that's been baked in, jon? >> i'll defer to steve on this one. i mean, it is one thing to talk about a growth slowdown. but when microsoft is priced, we're expecting growth in cloud. >> of course. >> it's significant growth. >> let's be clear about that this is huge. >> but if the street is expecting 35%, 40% and they come out with 30%, 35%, that's still a nice growth number, but not what the stock was trading based

on. >> right in past years, during the pandemic and pre-pandemic, they would have to knock that number out of the park for the stock to go up on earnings. they have done a good job. last quarter they said it is going to be several percentage points lower get ready, guys. buckle up. we're seeing the same trends across our it spend that everyone else is seeing. that's what -- it's going to keep growing i just want to be clear. it will keep growing, but it is definitely moderated he would say, look, we have a long run away here even if the growth slows, it will come back. >> but he's very cautious and there is maybe two more years of paying for the sector to come. in terms of that read through, we look for azure to see what aws would be aws is focused more maybe on startups and tech. do we think that microsoft's enterprise customers could maybe lift its numbers a little better than, say, google and aws?

>> yeah. that's what they rely on the most is that it spend going to remain the cfo has such a good read on this, and she's really good at being straightforward and saying, this is what we're seeing in it spend and i'm going to be hanging on, as everyone else should, hang on every word she says related to that it spend because that will give us a read on how businesses and especially the small and medium businesses are doing. that's their bread and butter. the big clients will continue to spread, but it is the small and medium businesses when they start to cut, you have to worry. >> linkedin on the ad side and people aren't hiring like they used to. fewer dollars there. steve, thank you. guys, let's get you an update on the stock calls we saw early this morning got a couple of statements we'll turn to bob. >> we do have an update from the new york stock exchange.

the exchange continues to investigate issues with today's opening auction. in a subset of symbols, opening auctions did not occur the exchange is working to clarify the list of symbols. impacted member firms may consider filing for clearly erroneous or rule 18 claims. let me explain that. every day stocks open roughly 9:30 it is one price. so what happens is, everybody puts in orders to buy and sell some of them are market orders some are limited orders. but they put on a price. they build a book and determine what the opening price is based on the orders the buy and sell for whatever reason, it is not clear, but many of the orders to buyand sell that normally go into the book to determining the opening price did not get into the book as a result, many stocks open with very low volume and somewhat crazy prices. i will give you an example here. big materials company mosaic opened at $40.29 and closed at

$38.49 yesterday there's a rather crazy number. it was halted immediately. as you can see, it is back to close to where it was yesterday. this has happened in reverse, too. walmart, for example, closed at $142.64 yesterday and opened at $159.80. it, too, was halted because of the limit up, limit down requirement. you can't trade in certain bands, outside of certain bands. it was halted and reopened it opened right around where it was yesterday at $142 and change there is two issues. number one, are these opening quotes erron eeous and the nyc declares them null and void and then you decide what is the opening price after the limit up, limit down that's the first issue they have to determine that's a bit of a nightmare because there is several dozen big names here, but it may be the only reasonable thing they could do at this point

the second issue is what exactly happened we don't know. however, in the past, these kinds of technical problems have been associated with software upgrades or security upgrades that have occurred again, we do not know, but that has occurred in the past i can assure you there is a lot of software people around the nyc right now trying to figure out what happened. >> bob, we'll get to you as we learn more this morning. interesting morning. while it may seem like tech in the meantime is the best performing sector this year, it is communications services went from being the worst performer last yearto being up 12% so far in '23. some signs are starting to show that it may be overbought. it is the farthest above the 50-day moving average with 83% above that trend line. it includes names like netflix which has seen rallies joining us this morning, todd gordon joins us. talk about this action, todd we have heard a lot of things

about the beginning of the year. low quality start to the year. interesting short covering element. do you think it's overbought >> communications, karl. hey, how are you doing this morning? no they have been significantly out of favor one of the key themes we're seeing here is a rotation back into communications from a very -- a very low starting point in a rotation out of energy, right? so as you said, they're coming up against the 200-day moving average. and so much of this of the nasdaq and s&p is facing just a wall of key technical, highly visible resistance so i think if you look at the components, what's actually making communications rotate in right now, early on it's been mobile and fixed telecom but some of the other parts of communications like internet,

broadcasting, entertainment are just starting to get going we just saw microsoft try to make a run got stuck. google all of a sudden is making a run. i say it's still early. >> right do you think the money continues to come from energy? there is some chatter today that maybe output remains unchanged at the meeting next week some of the earnings out of industrials today maybe not that scintillating. i wonder what will keep that flow moving. >> yeah. i think more of it has to do with visibility on where rates are going. we have had the market come in, valuations the market has been repriced we have visibility on where the fed will go. and we are seeing rotation into growth it is really the entire value trade is starting to come off. i'm not declaring the rotation over but health care, industrials, energy, utilities, even some real estate is coming off in tech look at the move in semis yesterday. semis. we're talking about all these technical levels in

communication. semis just broke everything. so i think we're going to give a little bit of the growth trade a go here. >> so the market has been repriced but is it the right repricing? do we need to go back to the pandemic or further back when interest rates were higher what is your thesis based on what the fed is going to do this year >> yeah. it's -- you know, the fed is trying to club us over the head with higher for longer will there be a five handle consistently but if you look at where we are in the next two to three meetings in the back half of '23, it says not only do we have a five handle but we're down four and a quarter, maybe even a rate cut we will start to see that translate in cpi prints. and i do think if you look at the real yield curve, i think if everyone is caught up in nominal looking at this inverted yield

curve probably 70, 80 basis points, but if you look at real rates, we still do have a normally shaped yield curve. and i think that earnings, i don't think will be as bad microsoft was viewed to have significant cloud slowdown ubs came out with a report saying implementation of the second gen of big cloud would be very sticky and they might not have as much success in the first generation that's been pulled back. you look at some of the tech names talking about overbuildup in inventories the chips are rallying now in response to perhaps inventories aren't as stocked up as we were led to believe so perhaps earnings on a growth, it isn't going to be all that bad. >> yeah. let's talk one more bit about microsoft. today the morgan stanley desk says ever since they talked about those two difficult years in tech on the way, we have had

good commentary out of dabos not too bad. microsoft was posturing ahead in reduction in force do you think that's true in. >> i do think microsoft has -- it tried to make a go here in the first week of january, and there was a lot of, you know, to do about this new chatgpt, putting google under pressure. i think the cloud slowdown might be a little overdone, but i think the -- the lead that microsoft took in the beginning i think is being reeled back here a little bit. microsoft controls 20% of cloud and market hair. you know, if you want to compare again to let's say amazon, you know, amazon's concerns and woes have been extrapolated into

microsoft and cloud. but amazon has their own issues, right? >> sure. >> so i think google is symbolic of this growth trade coming back on microsoft trying to make it go but google will be focussing on those coms as they rotate back in. >> look forward to a little more clarity later today. todd, appreciate it. thanks. after the break, despite bitcoin's rally, mizzou is reiterating. plus, what verizon is saying ahead of at&t and t-mobile and live nation will take questions from lawmakers after the meltdown that occurred during the sale of taylor swift tickets. just can't shake it off. anti-trust concern in focus. "tech check" is just getting started.

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welcome back to "tech check. take a look at coinbase, up more than 50% to start 2023, partially because of the risk on trade, partially a result of bitcoin's recent rally don't believe the hype

retail investors are still hesitant to jump back into crypto let's bring in the managing director who joins with an underperform rating price target of $30 dan, so coinbase is up near $55 now. it was at $33 three weeks ago. is crypto the whole reason why you don't like this? why do you like robinhood, which also had a run higher and probably lower transactions ahead? >> yeah. thanks for -- great to be on the show again i think what we're seeing here, remember, crypto is only a very small fraction of robinhood's revenue. they have equitequities they have options. they're getting into retirement. it is a bigger, more diversified platform this is problem with coinbase, it shows you that if you did not trade in december during the winter, 90% chance you didn't trade in january even if you traded in december,

30% chance you left, which means there is really no retail appetite for crypto trading. they make 50 to 100 times more take rate or yield or profits on a retail i think it will be a rough awakening when people see the revenue and they will see just how much down the take rate or the yield has come for coinboin. >> how much of that, though, is just momentary retail investors are piling into tesla, which had been trading in tandem with crypto assets. we have seen this booming in general over the past few days and weeks. maybe crypto gets popular again. >> yeah. i think tesla is a great example here because it's the quintessential retail trade. there is a real product behind at the scene la. there is a car it's beautiful it's shiny there is nothing here. at the end of the day, what are we dealing with?

you're basically trading nonproductive assets including bitcoin. there is really no utility to any of these right now it might seem as an interesting peg on tesla and everything moves in the same direction. i expect bifurcation over time, especially when people's wallets and you have seen these layoffs become smaller, they will make a decision on do i want to invest in the crypto currency. >> mastercard and visa are reporting pretty soon. the savings rates coming down. there are estimates that people are taking on a whole lot of credit card debt what kind of numbers do you expect to see, to hear about in delinquencies and late payments thou throughout the ecosystem of this quarter and how will this affect the stocks >> yeah. so visa and mastercard, they don't get affected by delinquencies right now. i think everyone that's bullish

on these names, we're bullish on mastercard, it is bullish on the same thesis, which is the china reopening. what you mention on delinquencies, that's more relevant for sofi. but it's an important point because as those continue to rise, we will see an initial excitement about the fact that things are still good, and then there will be that sort of moment that you would see that people will say, hey, what are we actually dealing with a slowing spend,rising delinquencies. i don't expect this rally in the stocks to linger for a reasonable -- more reasonable time. >> okay. but i guess they need that consumer to keep spending one way or another dan, thank you. coming up after the break, verizon with results today guidance coming in a bit soft. but we did have a turn around to the upside stocks positive right now. that's ahead of at&t tomorrow

and t-mobile next week get a look on the markets as we're circulating around 40, 15 or so with the dow roughly flat. 'lbeig bk.

shares of verizon are higher coming up a bit short of expectation. julia has more on the quarter, what was said today and what it might mean for competitors late last week. >> verizon shares are now up about 1% full year guidance came in below analysts and revenue $35.3 billion was a hair stronger than anticipated verizon added 31,000 postpaid

phone subscriber that was lower than anticipated but notable growth after the company lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the prior two quarters now, verizon has lost market share to t-mobile and at&t amid price wars but the ceo says they will be surgical around specific segmented price hikes. >> last year actually i was disappointed over the second quarter. we didn't perform. talking a lot of action in the third quarter. start seeing some improvements in the third quarter, we saw improvements we saw momentum. and that's what we're coming into in '23. so there is a lot of things to do it is a very competitive market. >> verizon has underperformed its competitors in the past year take a look at this 12 month stock chart. it is down about 26% while t-mobile has gained 35 or 36%.

at&t over that time period down about 3% so we will be hearing from at&t tomorrow morning when they report their earnings and then t-mobile reports a week from tomorrow >> yeah. thanks so much looking forward to it. shares of uber are moving lower today. the company's freight division announcing it will lay off 3% of its workforce, that's 150 employees. the head of the division writing we accelerated hiring last year within certain areas of our brokage business planning for a different economic reality, but the volumes did not materialize as expected. if those words sound familiar, it's because they might be different economic reality just last week. while this is a small amount relative to its more than 30,000 global workforce, this is the first round of layoffs since the pandemic saying last week he wasn't playing any company wide layoffs, jon we will hear from the company when it reports on february 8th.

uber, lyft, doordash part of this unprofitable gig economy that really do need to get those costs under control. you could argue more so than some of the other companies that made cuts. >> i would argue that shopify and snap long before they were developing that line about -- >> they coined it. >> yeah, planning for a different economic reality than materialized, spending at a certain rate, you know, spotify even just this week saying much the same thing and then, boom, the brakes got hit on the top line. but that bottom line has a way of sticking around. >> yeah. unfortunately for the employees, that has become a popular phrase and maybe providing cover for ceos to follow later this hour, paypal shopify and others, we will talk about regulation in the space, competition from big banks plus, the ability of private companies to rai meyn is ugh macro environment.

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welcome back two hours into trading, let's get a check on the markets stocks have just about clawed their way back on major indexes after a weak opening the s&p holding on to that 4,000 level. just by its fingernails. some of your movers at this hour 3m the worst performer after cutting its guidance amd shares falling after

bernstein downgraded the stock to market perform citing worsening pc market trends we were just talking about that with microsoft semi and smh on pace for the best starts of the year. some news coming out of walmart just now the retailer saying it is going to raise the minimum wage to $14 an hour for store employees. now let's get to bertha combs for a news update. the biden administration appears to be dropping its opposition to sending abrams battle tanks to you crane. that according to multiple reports. "reuters" saying an announcement could come as early as this week the u.s. shift is coming at the same time that germany appears to be ready to allow its leopard 2 tanks to be shipped to ukraine. germany will give poland approval to send of its tanks to

ukraine later this week. and american skier mick kayla shiffrin has broken the women's record for world cup wins her 83rd victory put her above the mark set by lindsey vaughn she is three wins short of the record set by denmark. >> people counted her out after the last olympics. not a good move. thank you. last year, tech deals, as you know, slowed down on the back half with the first six months accounting for nearly three-quarters of activity for the year our next guest says to expect movement soon, though, especially in enterprise software just yet, the information reported that vista partners may be looking to scoop up data firm the stock has fallen 75% from the highs back in '21. they raised more than $32

billion just last month. the senior minnesotaaging director eric mandle, the perfect person to talk about this. >> great to be here. thank you. >> you had to notice what happened over the weekend on the outlook. it is not that bad i feared the fourth quarter was going to be surprisingly bad, and it was not is that instructive for the year >> yeah. i think that's a great way to start this conversation. we're experiencing everything being front loaded we saw demand front loaded during covid and now stress around earnings, a potential recession is so worked into everybody's psyche that it is healthy to see that i think, you know, to zero on in private equity in particular, they're very, very good at having a beat on where the puck is going so anecdotal, we had a board meeting this weekend with a client related to private equity, the key question

everybody used to ask is how quickly can you grow how fast can you grow your arr and what do you need to do it? there has been a total 180 it's what is your unlevered free cash flow? how sustainable is it? and god forbid if there is economic pullback, how do you manage it? they all have a beat on that, probably better than anybody and a sidebar, an interesting statistics, if you were to come boin all of the portfolio companies that the big pe folks own, you have one of the biggest software companies in the world. they know their stuff. >> what is special about software assuming this year will give us some positive direction. >> yeah, great question. so we hear this from clients and clients are obviously split between folks that want to buy things and folks that want to sell themselves. and the folks that want to buy things are pes and corporates.

i can't remember a time when everybody is focused on the same thing. usually you have opposed opinions i'd say there are three fundamental thoughts flowing through everybody's minds. number one, what is your unlevered free cash flow it's number one. that's a sizable shift from a year or two ago. but number two is, what is your demonstrable total addressable market so can you actually say, i'm going to grow faster than infrastructure as a service wholistically. the reason that's so important is if someone says hybrid cloud is growing at 12%, that's not good enough anymore. you need to grow faster than that but the last bit which flows through every conversation we have been having is something called rule of 40. you talked a lot about it on the show simply defined, rule of 40 is taking your topline growth rate, adding your free cash flow margin, and that number needs to be more than 40.

now, sounds simplistic, right? the arithmetic is, but a year ago, two years ago, rule of 40 really meant 40% growth and just breaking through cash flow break even now we've actually inverted. so boards are hyper focused on understanding how do you get rule of 40 to be more like 30% margin and 10% growth? and of course private equity firms need to be laser focused on understanding that their current portfolios are able to generate free cash flow but they're identifying assets to buy. >> what degree then is macro a risk or maybe, as some argue, it intensity is getting so strong within a weaker macro that it doesn't matter as much. >> great point as well i'm probably more optimistic than most. i think a lot of ceos, board members are also very optimistic it is just no one wants to front

run how they are going to perform, especially if they are a public company that's understandable. what we're seeing on the m and a side is this feels a little like 2018 if you remember, like '09 to '17 was an amazing bull run. some of the biggest deals ever were done between '18 and '19. a $34 billion deal a number of massive transactions the reason for that is buyers, whether they're pe or corporate, actually feel a little more corporate if valuation comes down to the mean, if that makes sense. >> believe me, a lot of investors would love to have a repeat of '18. we will see how much lines up. things don't necessarily rhyme exactly. great conversation there thank you so much. >> wonderful to be here. thank you. coming up after the break, amazon adding prescription perks as big tech continues to push into health care plus, speaking of retailers,

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for prime members in the u.s., giving subscribers access to 50 generic medications for treating chronic conditions the deal costs $5 a month with free delivery. worth noting here, though, people with medicaid or medicare are ineligible for rx pass and it doesn't offer insulin or specialty medications. let's bring in bertha combs. how does this build on that pill pack acquisition from about five years ago and then these one medical ambitions that amazon has got? >> if we were talking about a football game, this is kind of getting a field goal to get some points on the board. amazon hasn't gotten through that much traction with amazon pharmacy this is a very attractive deal because it is not just one medication that you could get more $5 a month. you could get a bunch of them. so you could get, if you were on a heart medication, if you were on an antidepressant and maybe also hypertension medication,

you could get all three of them for just $5 a month. that is a huge perk that might entice people to go ahead and use the pharmacy. >> okay. >> you are also seeing some of their competitors lower this morning, jon, because if it works, then you are going to see maybe a bit of a price war when it comes to these generics that don't help with regard to margin. >> so is this a lost leader when it comes to acquisition? >> that's what it looks like to me and then to get that touchdown, if you will, once they get the one medical deal now you have an ecosystem where you can really feed into the pharmacy, get more people who might be going into one medical thinking about that, more doctors prescribing. you get that virtuous circle it is a big shot across the bow. >> maybe what we're seeing with amazon's investment in health care where they already made this commitment on one medical

recently, similar to what we see with microsoft in gaming and in ai, they're going to continue doubling down on certain investments, even if they cost them in the difficult economic environment. but they're just going to be choosey about what they spend on >> well, it is hard to ignore when you are talking about 17, 18% of the u.s. economy. health care is big business and everybody wants to get their stake. most of the tech companies just haven't really been able to breakthrough those health care silos. amazon is hoping by having a player like a one medical and now that's a pharmacy that they can really get some traction. >> tough nut, but if you can crack it, there is a lot of meat in there be bertha, thank you. let's talk flat. it was part of the class of fintech darlings that went on to raise money in a $15 billion

valuation. like its peers, it is facing more competition despite the selloff, the shift to digital finance will not revert back. specifically in the digital wallet space that will be erased between fintech, big brands. joining me now our own kate rooney to ask some questions here zach, so if it is this race, who wins it? we have been covering the big bank earnings and recent stumbles in consumer fintech how does this roll out in the next few years and don't say everyone can win. >> thank you so much for having me over the past year, we have seen a major shift in the way digital finances started to play out, the way that many companies have grown. one thing that we see is there is definitely a slowdown on the startup side that means there is a slowdown in new user acquisition from many of the fintech companies. that said, we see many of the big banks and large technology companies step in and start to launch digital financial

products the banks themselves, they're the biggest fintech companies. it is a question of how fast they will do the technology side. >> and how well. >> yes we have been impressed by the pace of the innovation that the big banks are building you you have seen all the headlines. >> is that your way of saying that everyone can win? you guys say it is a race. there is always a winner in the race who, i guess, is best positioned over the next two years? yes, the big banks have been making bigger steps in this race we talked about the billions of dollars of jp morgan's acquisition. who is best positioned right now? >> it is a great question. and, yeah, what we're starting to see is the big banks are bidding great products and they have stumbles along the way. you see startups are stumbling you see non-banks building

non-financial products are stumbling. that said, the trend is certainly really great when we look at the big banks, impressed by the ability of them to distribute products well. of course, they have long histories in these areas when we look at fintechs, we see them start to shift the types of products they have been building they have been focused on checking accounts, savings account. they're starting to build in lending products and high-yield savings products it will take a while to retool to fit with the new market. >> it is interesting to see the fall after markets and what goldman sachs has done i wonder, too, about the pull forward effect we saw with fintech and digital commerce we over estimated that where are we for post pandemic now that things are reopen where did we settle on what

happened to digital commerce >> when we talk to many of the financial players that were out there, they told us they were pulling forward their road map two or three years i saw them pulling many projects they were trying to fund one of the big shifts we have seen is consumers went much more digital with their financial life instead of watching to a bank branch, you used their on line product. we have seen more than 80% of consumers use at least one fintech product on a week to week or month to month basis consumers are not going back to a world where they have to walk in and talk to a teller. it is unlikely someone will print out that few hundreds of pages of documentation they want to do it digitally so digital is here to stay >> i wonder about ach as well. that's an area we have seen take off. the ability to pay directly out of your bank account if that starts to take off, what

is going to happen to the visas, the master cards of the world? will the fees get compressed on the merchant side? a lot of people are upset that they have to pay so much in credit card processing fees. do you expect that to hit the credit card companies and the networks of the world? >> i can't comment on visa card however one thing i am excited for is the increasing diversity of payments products that are available out there. obviously you're seeing the rise of many, many of the wallets we're tracking very closely the emergence of a product which is the federal reserve building a faster way to do ach, a faster way to do bank payments. and there's a payment by the clearance house. i think consumers want to move it more easily and want the money to land when they say they're going to send it as we continue to push the ball forward in technology here i think that's going to be great >> it's going to be important for merchants too.

kate and i were talking about this yesterday but fin tech and big banks they've been partners then kind of phrenomies. there was an article yesterday in the journal talking about the big banks creating a digital wallet and a way to take back their customers from the middle man. connecting with big banks with the consumer >> i'm a big believer the more products a consumer has available to them, the more options they have, the better their financial life is going to be, and that's the foundation. we want to help consumers live better financial lives this new wallet that came out i don't think all of us know the details yet. we've seen the emergence of wallets come from all sorts of places we've seen retailers want to build wallets and issue their own cards and you've seen this with apple and google, of course and i think that's amazing

i suspect, by the way, this wallet trend is going to continue there's going to be way more before there are less. >> it does seem like a race. finally, zack, how do you guys think about your valuation you have that deal with visa and then you guys raised it more than $13 billion your comps in the public market have come down a lot since then. have you guys revised your internal valuation or think about raising more money at a different valuation? >> as a private company we don't comment on it very much -- >> many are, though, private companies. >> we choose not to. we're fortunate we're in a market that continues to grow. i think the long-term trend is only going in one direction and couldn't be more excited about the years ahead. we feel comfortable about the position we're in right now. >> thanks for being with us. if you want more fintech we're going to continue this

discussion there's a lot more to talk about. that's kicking off at 12:30 eastern, 9:30 on the west coast. all right, still to come bad blood between taylor swift and ticket master. live nation facing the senate judiciary committee today after mishandling those ticket sales that story's coming up if you missed part of the show don't forget to follow and subscribe to our podcast you can listen anytime, anywhere, wherever you download podcasts tech check is back in just a moment

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brought to you by adt. welcome back ticket master owner live nation facing questions from lawmakers today after that outrage over taylor swift ticket sales. congress focusing on whether live nation is violating anti-trust rules julia? >> well, carl, the hearing is going on right now, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are taking aim at live nation and its ticket master division arguing that its combination of both venue and ticketing disadvantages consumers and artists. senator amy klobuchar arguing to break the company up >> this is all a definition of

monopoly because live nation is so powerful that it doesn't even need to exert pressure it doesn't need to threaten because people just fall in line >> live nation's president and cfo defending the company saying that the company helps artists he blamed scalpers and bots for the ticketing issues that plagued taylor swift fans. >> while the bots failed to penetrate our systems or acquire any tickets the attack caused a slow down and pause our sales. this is what led to a terrible consumer experience, which we deeply regret. we apologize to the fans we apologize to ms. swift. we need to do better and we will do better. >> there are also industry leaders testifying many of them questioning live nation's compliance with its consent decree that banned it from retaliating against concert

venues for using other ticketing companies. so one thing's for sure here, guys there's a lot of disagreement. live nation is defending its approach, but everyone agrees that taylor swift is amazing >> because you're in trouble if you don't agree it seems julia, this reminds me of the amazon situation with third party retailers and e-commerce amazon says, we've got power but we're not a monopoly, look at all these other options people have right now in the music business it seems most artists make practically nothing off of streaming. they have to rely on live shows to make money. how important is the res resolution of this issue between should ticket master and live nation be together how important is it to the whole ecosystem including digital? >> it's very important it is separate from the streaming business like say spotify which is a company we've been talking about reorganization and the fact we're going to be hearing from

spotify's earnings coming up but i think it's really important here to talk about the fact this is the company that emerged in 2009. they have faced anti-trust concerns before. the question is whether there needs to be more action to really protect consumers and artists, but live nation is saying, hey, we've helped so many artists, look at the numbers and percentage of touring groups we've helped because of our platforms a little bit of he said, she said, and certainly interesting to hear the conversation especially the comments i have to say from the musical artists. it's been pretty interesting >> meantime on your beat, julia, we talked about the spotify layoffs yesterday. we've got live nation today. couple of calls about our parent comcast, ongoing troubles on pressures in the macro ad environment and this note on disney saying whatever iger does this quarter it's going to be coming out swinging. >> oh, yeah, we're looking for some changes to come from

disney we heard from iger he's working on a restructuring, so we'll be watching for that when the company reports in a couple of weeks. >> obviously a very consequential day with all the industrial earnings, some of the weird pricing action we're told things are back to normal and of course everyone waiting it see what the guidance is going to look like. let's get to the judge and the half all right, carl, thank you very much. and welcome to the half time report front and center this hour big tech in focus. microsoft reporting in just about four hours will this keep the early tech run on track joining me at the table, see how we're doing just past 12:00 noon in the east. i feel like we're waiting and seeing here from microsoft there's the dow down about 20. not a whole heck of a lot, the yield on the